Struggling With Parenting? You Could Try a Parenting Coach

When you’re pregnant, no one really tells you how exhausting or crazy it can get once you have the baby in your arms. Sleeplessness and postpartum exhaustion can get to you and most of all, you really have no clue how to manage a tiny human who only cries to communicate. When you finally feel you have it in the bag, your baby becomes a toddler, and brings along a new set of challenges.

In Western and European countries, many young parents  who can’t get around parenting are  turning to someone who can help them through. And this person is actually a professional, and is called – a ‘parenting coach.’

Parenting coaches can help a parent/s deal with multiple issues. Some of them could include:

• Ways to deal with behavioural issues such as defiance, fights between siblings and excessive anger between kids
• Suggesting tools for day-to-day interactions between a parent and a child to help understand kids better
• Helping suggest best parenting practices when it comes to a child’s growth, education and activities
• Helping a parent deal with the child in the best  possible way during a crisis, such as an illness, divorce etc.

A parenting coach might provide tools but does not however, take the place of an expert and to treat behavioural disorders in kids like ADHD, depression, etc.
The difference between parenting after reading tips on blogs or receiving advice is that a coach has a one-to-one interaction with the parent and the child, to suggest solutions to a problem.

Who can be a parenting coach?

Certified courses on being a parenting coach are available and usually educators, childcare experts or psychologists choose to be a parenting coach. This sector is still largely not monitored.

So, will we start having parenting coaches in India?

We never can really know. For ages, young parents would turn to family elders or veteran parents for advice when they struggled with parenting. In a joint family, a child would constantly be surrounded by several caregivers, who each had their own method to raise the child. But with the advent of nuclear families, parents increasingly don’t know whether advice from friends, doctors and blogs are enough.

We honestly feel that parenting is a learning process and there’s really no right or wrong way to parent. Advice can be brought in from anywhere in the world in this digital age, and medical advancements can deal with severe behavioural problems in children better. So can one person who is supposed to be an ‘expert’ guide parents the right way to parent? It ultimately depends on the parent’s choice. A person who is convinced that external guidance from someone who is aware of parenting practices will help, will call in a parenting coach. As for others, they might just accept that raising a child is a journey, and that we keep learning forever.

Disclaimer: Information has been sourced from moms.com

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